Population control, Environment and NGO participation

Poverty and population growth are closely interlinked.Yet promoting family

planning amongst the poor is an extremely difficult task. Mr. K.B. Sahay, a
biomedical engineer, says that a family plagued by want - of food, water, fuel,
shelter, medical care- because of an exploitative social system, can hardly be
expected to appreciate the importance of family planning. But unless family
planning is popularised amongst the underprivileged classes, known typically
for having large families, the country population control programme cannot
succeed because these classes form almost one-third of our total
population. It is therefore imperative that the govt. should avail of the services
of the non-govt. organizations(NGOs) to popularise the family planning
programme. Some of the NGOs are quite well known among the poorer
classes and have to their credit some be persuaded to take up the task of
promoting family planning, their credibility and goodwill can go a long way in
popularising the idea of family planning.

Philanthropic services are undertaken for the limited and narrow goal of self-
upliftment(like feeding the beggars occasionally) are no doubt good but it
would certainly be far better to take up social service with an aim to eliminate
the very cause of human suffering. To do so, the NGOs should concentrate on
family planning because our massive population and its rapid growth are the
roots because of most of our problems which cannot be solved unless we
could control our population.

Althrough there are a great number of Govt. and non-govt. organizations

working to protect the environment, not one of them has so far highlighted the
linkage adequately or stressed to control our growing population and thereby
to save our ecological balance. Environmentalists in India could, in general,
be classified into two groups, one guided by Western Models and the other
influenced by Gandhian paradigms. The former think that ecological problems,
through a consequence of over-consumerism and industrialization are soluble
by technological measures irrespective of people's lifestyles and levels of
environmental decay is the consequence of not following the Gandhian model
of cottage industries and simple living.

The western Model doesn't bother about the population factor simply because
the western world does not have a problem of overpopulation, and the
Gandhian dictum is that the earth has enough for everybody's need but not
people's greed and there is no need to control the population by
contraceptives. Hence neither of the environmentalist groups in India raises
the issue of the population problem. It is merely a coincidence that the
concern for the environment has come before the concern for over-population.
Or is it because we do not want to take the responsibility for what we are
doing to the environment by not controlling our population?

It is important to realize that the impact of population on the environment is

Unfiled Notes Page 1

 It is important to realize that the impact of population on the environment is
the function of the number of people it supports an average level of
consumption. In other words, low per capita consumption, in a country with
high population density as in India, can be as dangerous for the global
ecology as high per capita consumption and low population levels as in the
west. So the excess population in India is as undesirable as the culture of
excessive consumerism in the developed countries.

However, realizing that India is growing fast in population, we should avail the
help of the NGOs in popularising family planning in the villages.
Pasted from <https://750words.com/day/2017-11-18>

Unfiled Notes Page 2